My motherboard is a ASUS P5LD2 and I am using a EM64T Intel Chip...the bios no longer gives me the option for HYPERTHEADING. I've updated it three times now and still NADA! It use to be there so what's the deal. I'm stumped. Can any one help?
Nodsu said:Perhaps HT is enabled by default now?
Sharkfood said:What CPU is it exactly?
Not all EMT64 Pentium or Celeron CPU's offer support for Hyperthreading, especially the Dual-Cores. Most Single-Core and Dual-Core Pentium D and Celeron CPU's do NOT have Hyperthreading.
Sharkfood said:Hi again hyperthreat,
Well, I don't know if I'd just fling that CPU out the window as it's really aimed at the hardercore gamer-user. It's a fine CPU for games.
Hyperthreading, while it can yield a smallish boost in business application and overall Windows operation, it can actually cause a bit more overhead or dimished performance in most games.
Remember, hyperthreading or not, instructions are all being fed to the same cpu core for processing. While hyperthreading effectively gives multiple thread pathways to the same CPU core, this is really not very well supported in games (like maybe 2-3 total) and still wont yield too much advantage if you're mainly interested in gaming. Many "hardcore" gamers run the single-threaded nt kernel in XP and game with this disabled, especially when overclocking for the best game performance. The overhead involved coupled with there really only being a single CPU core generally doesn't even pay off.. and usually costs more than it saves.
In Windows when doing a bunch of things, this flipflops a bit. Burning, playing MP3's, running Word, Photoshop and doing a bunch of things at once.. this can yield smallish gains as it helps keep the core saturated a little bit better as Windows apps are usually smaller/burstier bits of processing needed spanning lots of running applications. Hyperthreading is better suited to this environment.
If you're considering returning the CPU for multi-threading performance, and your motherboard does not have the voltage for Core 2, I'd simply say pick up a true-blue dual-core like the Preslers (which are DIRT cheap now) or a lower end core 2 duo, if your motherboard supports this. You can get a Presler 3.0ghz x 2, 800mhz FSB for $160 at NewEgg and this is truly the best of both worlds.. single core for gaming, true dual-core for XP threading, and a huge 2 x 2MB cache (2m for each core) to help take the byte out of overhead from the process.